Zimbabwe: Identity, Security and Conflict

© Steve Kibble

CIIR (Africa Advocacy Officer), January 2003

First draft comments welcome send to

What makes the crisis in Zimbabwe so intractable? Why is it so seemingly impervious to what look to outsiders as rational answers? Why does the southern African region, particularly its organisation the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the dominant country within SADC, South Africa, see unable or unwilling to act? What can southern Africans and those with partners in southern Africa do?

Misunderstandings certainly abound, but there are also fundamental questions of identity and human security complicating the search for easy answers. There are long-run pre-colonial, colonial and post colonial (dis)continuities overlaid with lack of fit between economic and political boundaries. The globalisation agenda of the North has only exacerbated the extremely uneven way that southern Africa, its states and peoples have been integrated into the world economy and polity. The process has been marked by resistance of different forms, including the emergence of new social forces, often referred to as civil society. States which have only recently emerged from liberation struggles against colonialism or apartheid now find themselves challenged by such new social forces, not all of which are coherent and united.

Whilst there have been successful resistance and democratisation struggles in southern Africa, they have often led to formal democracy but with little popular empowerment. Recent resistance has arisen to stabilisation programmes in which Southern regimes under pressure from Northern financial institutions and growing balance of payments constraints introduced policies abandoning social services. Policy in Southern states moved from fulfilling popular demand to the removal of market barriers. The upshot of states losing their distributive capacity meant state-society relations became highly confrontational. ‘Good governance’ broke down under the effects of neo-liberalism leading to the disappearance of consensus, political centralisation, peripheralisation of certain groups and generalised repression.

Traditionally, security has been viewed as firmly rooted in the nation state, itself the source of ‘identity’. It has operated through agreements between different militaries and political elites: a strongly male arena. But what happens to traditional security – and identity – when weaker nation states are less able to control their own policy as power shifts to global social formations, and markets are dominated by (Northern) transnational corporations, multilateral financial and trading institutions?

Brian Raftopoulos, President of the ‘Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee’ (which links 480 NGOs), sees the African state reaction as unhelpful and undemocratic. ‘On the one hand there is a global superpower, espousing liberal democratic values, but policing an economic agenda producing widespread global impoverishment; on the other hand this system of global inequalities is breeding an authoritarian nationalism in countries like Zimbabwe, that demands uncritical solidarity, and in which there is no place for national state accountability. Solidarity seems to mean little more than a defensive reaction to broader geo-political concerns. While it may provide some short-term solace to regimes facing a national crisis of legitimacy, it is a grossly inadequate basis for imagining alternative futures. The real need to build up co-ordinated African positions on global inequalities has also to be based on the democratic accountability of African nation states themselves.’

There are other relevant polarities. There is a gap between how Northerners/ Westerners perceive their own models and practice of human rights and development and how others in the world perceive them. Western oil and strategic interests, particularly in the Cold War context, backed ‘stable’ corrupt and oligarchic regimes rather than pursue human rights. This gap is probably most advanced in the Muslim/ Arab world and has a ready-made focus in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. (One can also dwell here of course on the particularly unsubtle forms of Bushite oil-driven foreign policy meeting an Arab world seeking through alternative forms of religious-driven identity to overcome its long humiliation by the West). But it provides anywhere a breeding ground for the authoritarian nationalism alluded to by Raftopoulos.

A ‘recent history versus recent amnesia’ polarity illustrates major differences between North and South. For many Zimbabweans alive today, the colonial and settler periods are very much part of their life experience and the forcible conquest of their lands is only three generations back – very recent in most understandings of history.  By contrast, most British and other European peoples have only a sketchy idea of what went on under colonial rule and its implications today in terms of 'failed' or collapsing states, skewed and inappropriate economies and state structures, manipulation of ethnic identities and authoritarian nationalism.

Some countries experienced colonialism especially intensely, particularly those which forcibly received large numbers of settlers who expropriated large amounts of land, and imposed racial domination and division – apartheid being the supreme example. In these countries – notably South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe after independence) – diversified economies geared to settler needs were created. At independence, these could be operated by newly-decolonising (black) elites. Such elites inherited powerful centralised state apparatuses, although little political or economic power. The parallels between the way Ian Smith (the last white minority leader of Rhodesia) and President Mugabe have used this kind of state – similar to the apartheid ‘national security state’ – are striking in their use of decentralised and informal (deniable) state repression combined with appeals to a created national identity and solidarity in the face of global enemies.

Zimbabwe faces multiple crises –a crisis of legitimacy as its postcolonial consensus crumbles, a crisis of expectations stemming from the failure of its economy and polity, a crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the institutions of the state. These add up to a crisis of security in which the state is increasingly repressive and centralised, but this process itself undermines stability so that it becomes less able to defend the elite and its supporters. The process may seem illogical, but it marks the ultimate if narrow realpolitik form of security where the state re-defines itself as the only element of society that needs security. It parallels the transition of the state from settler forms through the immediate (and popular) post colonial nationalist path to the incorporation of neo-patrimonial (or clientilist) elements as the power bloc uses naked power overlaid with a narrow form of Shona (its ethnic support base) identity as its only form of survival.

The ‘national security’ strategy of the elite of Zimbabwe’s ruling party (ZANU-PF) has led to economic collapse, severe repression and flight of both capital and professionals. It has also had severe economic consequences for the region although as yet there has been no concerted regional reaction to this in terms of security. This in turn relates to national elites being unable to formulate a path directed to human security, largely because of their lack of engagement with and mistrust of new social forces (which of course are not themselves necessarily united or coherent). Additionally, as the Zimbabwe elite struggled to contain popular resistance, it rallied its support base by playing its last cards of land, race and ‘anti-imperialism’ all of which had strong resonance for regional elites aware of their own vulnerabilities on these questions and within the global structure.

One form of resistance is regionalisation. It is however, contradictory, as both part of and a reaction to globalisation. As the Cold War world system of two antagonistic blocs ended, security became regionalised. Economically this is reflected by TNCs dominating regional economies as the new basis of international relations. The other states in the region, particularly South Africa, hesitate between a closed form of regional security and opening up to world economic forces for increased and supposedly more effective links to the global economy. South Africa is pushing a process where integrated manufacturing becomes the basis for a regional industrial strategy. For this base to reach into world markets, outside investment is crucial, but this in turn depends on improvements in governance which the NEPAD programme (an uneasy mix of pan-African idealism and neo-liberalism) seeks to bring about. This whole process is marked by contradiction which does nothing to lessen conflict and insecurity in Zimbabwe and the region.

South Africa at least initially believed that its model of negotiated settlement and compromise was transferable to Zimbabwe. It insists on 'quiet diplomacy' for reasons of regional solidarity and because it will not jump at the behest of former colonial masters. It points to misconceptions about the extent of its power as the 'regional hegemon' saying it cannot unilaterally reorder the region. Rather it vaunts a united regional approach based on avoiding confrontation and promoting multilateralism. Additionally, while South Africa has leverage over Zimbabwe in areas of finance, energy and oil, the economies are too closely linked to impose sanctions. It also knows that it too is vulnerable on the land question.

Both the ANC and ZANU-PF see themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the anti-colonial struggle with any other parties tainted by association with previous regimes. For this reason it and other southern Africa states have been only too ready to accept ZANU-PF’s policies as in some way Pan-African and anti-imperialist in the face of global inequalities and British ‘neo-colonialism’.

Strangely, given the support received by the ANC in exile, Pretoria has never supported human rights groups and opposition forces within societies whose governments are undemocratic and/or human rights violators. Instead, it seems to rely on notions of the legitimacy of heads of state and of sovereignty, key Organisation of African Unity positions, but formalistic concepts nonetheless. Pretoria has less trouble with the idea of ‘a just world order’ which means equity amongst nations, but little concern for more far-reaching restructuring of power to embrace human security concerns.

Towards a Democratic Response

Mugabe’s charge that the UK is attempting to re-colonise Zimbabwe deflects from the real problem: it is structural rather than conspiratorial processes in the world economy which are potentially undermining Zimbabwe. Mugabe is defending a new power bloc inside Zimbabwe which clings to power in the face of global inequalities, popular pressure from new and old social movements. And he is doing it with a Cold War rhetoric that resonates with both African elites and landless and frustrated African populations. The contradiction of the policy of this power bloc is that it is unable to create resistance to globalisation precisely because it does not engage with its own population.

How do we shift the monopoly on security from the military, and build a framework of human security addressing the concerns of those without power? How do we frame an alternative perspective which can promote regional, national and local policies based on globalisation from below and human security? Increasingly, World and European social forums and African civil society reflections on NEPAD have attempted to provide answers which involve global civil society and non-governmental organisations (not to confuse the two). They stress international humanitarian values and citizenship to counter nationhood, ‘civilisation blocs’ or geo-economic units. Such values would include peace, the promotion of human rights, concepts of the common good as the building blocks for security, reciprocity and multilateral power centres. They would equally demand that domestic security concerns involve greater attention to violence against women and children, often ignored by state agencies. In the post Cold War consensus and ‘victory of the West’ such voices appear much weaker than the ‘inevitability of globalisation’ agenda, but the need becomes stronger. Marrying the organisation to the need and the alternative vision remains the task. It may not seem obvious in the presence of more immediate concerns, but the fight against repression in Zimbabwe illustrates much of this. It involves a discussion of the values post-colonial states and regions should have and their road to development, democracy and overcoming of colonial and apartheid structures. All of these issues pose crucial human security dilemmas.

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